Copure, this magical healing vibration from that wonderful man, helped us claim our family health traditions. It became the way we cared for our skin and hair, and the way we cared for bumps, scratches, sunburns, chapped lips, diaper rashes, and everything else that a young family encounters all in the course of a day. Back then, as it is now, Copure was a word of mouth thing around the island. Porfirio didn’t need to try and sell this oil. He would give it away and when the jars went dry, it sold itself. He had devoted customers all over the country. As he grew older, his son Paul moved him and the business to Rehoboth, Massachusetts. They were able to still supply our local health food stores with Copure and we were thankful we could still get it, even then. Porfirio passed away in 1998 at the age of 102. In the tradition of his father, Paul kept the business going.

    When it became time for Paul to retire himself, rather than see the company stop, or become the stuff of island folklore, we asked him if we could continue the tradition in our family and begin making Copure. Now we must admit, we had strong inner motives to do this. Never again would we have to be without Copure. We could hand it down from generation to generation forever. We wonder if that’s the way Porfirio received it and the way he thought when he passed it down? We were also excited to keep passing it on to the folks who had been using it for years. Folks who now say to us, “I remember my mother using that.” And so in the summer of 2006, Paul taught us how to make Copure by hand. We are proud to announce that Copure is now home once again near lower Thames Street, in the fifth ward, in our home in Newport, Rhode Island. It is being made in the same loving tradition, with Porfirio’s own wine press, in our second kitchen, with our nurturing hands. The same hands that Copure has nurtured all these years now promise to nurture it in return and bring it into your loving home as well.

In Good Health,
Deborah and LeRoy White